In the autumn of 1867
Napoleon
met the King of
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg.
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg.
Robertson - Bismarck
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 253
to discover the soul, thought, and work of a nation in the
columns of the newspapers with which its women light
their stoves and the men their cigars. The entrenched
Philistia of Great Britain, regarding universities as places
where youths learned either to become gentlemen or book-
worms, and science as a harmless recreation for literary
institutes or the finger-staining drudgery of the apothe-
cary, persisted in regarding the German universities, where
the renaissance of the German mind was being completed,
as centres of dreamy idealism or the dreary laboratories
of an unintelligible theology. The apostle of sweet-
ness and light, Matthew Arnold, writing the classical
reports in which he foretold the coming supremacy of
Germany because, like the Italian renaissance, it strove to
combine the humanities with science, with 1866 staring
him in the face, believed that the French army in 1870
would smash the Prussian. So potent even on priestly
rebels of the House of Levi are the Idols of the Market-
place and of the Tribe. Colonel Stoffel, a tragic Cas-
sandra, if ever there was one, for three years warned his
government at Paris of what Prussia was preparing; but
the men like Marechal Niel, who had divined the truth,
either perished under the surgeon's knife or were impotent.
The Second Empire had justly forfeited the confidence of
thinking and toiling France; and the ears of the Tuileries
and the Quai d'Orsay were stuffed with clerical wax.
But the lower the barometer fell, the harder, with
Bismarck's kno-vledge, did the Great General Staff work.
Thanks to the Federal Chancellor, it was free from the
interference not merely of journalists or irresponsible
politicians but of a Cabinet which had never studied war
or regarded it as an unexpected disease, to be dealt with on
its symptoms when there could be no doubt it had broken
out. To Bismarck there were two certainties, and only
two, in an inscrutable world--the Prussian Crown and the
Prussian Army. The Prussian King was his affair, and on
him, as on the rocher de bronze, the compass of policy could
swing freely in the dirtiest weather. The time of blood
and iron had not passed. It was truer than ever in his
interpretation that the greatest question of the age, the
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BISMARCK
settlement with France, would not be settled by resolutions
in the Reichstag and the Zoll Parliament, the speeches of
Thiers, or the manufactured plebiscites of the Minister of
the Interior at Paris. The surgery of war was needed to
let the bad blood out in Germany. When some thousands
of Bavarians and Wurttembergers had fallen beside Prus-
sian, Saxon, Hanoverian, and Nassauer, the Empire would
be made. The iron crown of the Imperial Hohenstaufen
would not be picked up in the gutters of Frankfurt or
Berlin--that was the folly of 1848 and 1866--but on a
victorious battlefield in France.
The idea of disarmament had been in the air since 1868,
and Daru at Paris, Virchow and the Radicals at Berlin were
playing with it. But Lord Newton in his Life of Lord
Lyons has kindly lifted the blinds for us, and the instructive
episode in which the British government, inspired from
Paris, confidentially invited in the spring of 1870 Prussia
to join in a European disarmament can now be studied in
its entirety. Bismarck maintained a grave courtesy--he
was never gravely courteous with the realities of statecraft
or of fife--but the admirable essays of Lord Clarendon
must have stirred 'the irreverent merriment' that he
allowed himself when English pacifism was proved by the
sale of an ironclad to Prussia and the readiness to sell
another. These excellent insulars simply did not live in
the world of facts, and Bismarck put them aside with the
soothing firmness that self-control owes to a well-meaning
but hysterical woman.
Clarendon in 1864 had protested that he desired no
further intercourse with cet homme, sansfoi et sans hi; he
now appealed to Count Bismarck--' I am sure that a
statesman so liberal and far-sighted will admit without
regret'--a sentence the choice of the epithets in which is
delicious. Bismarck replied quietly,' that he did not dare
even to name the subject of the letter to the King. . . .
Coming from England it would make the worst impression
on him. ' He added 'that any weakening of Prussia's
power, any disturbance of the Balance of Power in Europe,
can hardly be for the interest of England'--and empha-
sised the formidable dangers that Prussia had to face from
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 255
France, Austria, Russia, and--a pretty stroke--Denmark.
'I saw,' wrote our ambassador, 'it was useless to pursue
the question further. ' In reality it was useless to have
raised it at all.
This is not a case of superior wisdom after the event.
When our Foreign Office suggested that Prussia should
disarm, it was asking Prussia to cease to be the Prussia of
Frederick the Great and Bismarck; it was further asking
that Prussia and Germany should abandon the ideal of
unification on Bismarckian lines. There was substantial
truth in Bismarck's contention that France was irrecon-
cilably hostile to German ambitions, and that this hostility
made the armed strength of Prussia a first condition of
security, and, though he did not say so, of attaining her end
in defiance of that hostility. If Lord A. Loftus had not
categorically informed our Foreign Office that north and
south would seize the first opportunity of agreement
between the two parties to unite, he was writing, as
Bismarck said in 1862, 'more nonsense to London than I
suspected. ' There was as little chance of the government
at Berlin abandoning this ideal of union, as there was of
England renouncing the union with Scotland and Ireland
on the suggestion of Berlin 'in the interest of European
peace and the Balance of Power,' or of the United States
abandoning American unity in 1861 or 1867, because it
suited the aristocrats of Great Britain and Europe. The
suggestion of renunciation was to the German mind an
impertinence which proved English jealousy. Lord Lyons,
Ollivier, Daru, Napoleon in. , the Empress Eugenie, Thiers,
the young Gambetta, who had leaped into fame over the
proces Baudouin, could all have told Clarendon that
neither the Second Empire nor France would permit the
union of North and South Germany--the establishment
on their frontier of a military empire, controlled by
Bismarck. Had our Foreign Office informed the Quai
d'Orsay that the condition of disarmament was the accept-
ance by France of a German Empire from the Alps to the
Baltic, the reply would have been truly enough that it was
a command to Napoleon to abdicate. We had no answer
to Bismarck's interpolation that he could have settled
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BISMARCK
with Napoleon by letting him have Belgium and Luxem-
burg--Belgium, Palmerston's creation of 1839. From
1867 to 1870 our Foreign Office, like every other Foreign
Office, was kept in a perpetual fret and fever by Napoleon's
direct and indirect efforts to pave the way for annexing
Belgium, and Belgium did not settle the problem of the
Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine were to all Germans 'un-
redeemed Germany'; they were to German Nationalism
what Rome was to Italian Nationalism. Nothing but
French bayonets and the chassepots of Mentana kept Italy
out of Rome. Nothing but the chassepots kept the French
flag flying at Strasburg and Metz; nothing but German
bayonets would get the Germans across the upper Rhine.
If Lord Clarendon did not recognise these plain realities
he and his colleagues at Downing Street were simply de-
ceiving themselves. It was easy for a British minister and
British public opinion--the combined expression of a
triumphant Nationalism--to dismiss these distressing
realities as the symptoms of the diseased mind. The
poultice of disarmament did not and could not pluck from
German- and French memory a rooted sorrow, and the
idea that it could was neither statesmanship nor even
common sense.
The error went far deeper and much further back into
the history of the European State system. Bismarck could
smother the proposal in a tangle of detail: but the prin-
ciple of disarmament cut down to the bone and marrow
of the Prussian State. A progressive disarmament levied
on the European States like a progressive income-tax, with
a super-tax for all exceeding some fixed limit, ignored the
fundamentals of the situation. Was Prussia expected to
give up, or was she not, the law of 1814 and the reorganised
military system of 1862-66 by which every Prussian male
was required to receive military training? How could
Prussia ' disarm' without abandoning this principle? The
Prussian army of 1867 was simply a scientific organisation
to realise this fundamental of her civic polity, at a minimum
of cost and friction to the civil population and the crvSl
state. The Prussian State was the outcome of the prin-
ciple--Das Folk in Waffen; the army was not as in Great
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION. 257
Britain a state mackintosh that could be thrown off in fine,
and rediscovered from the national cupboard for use in
dirty, weather. Yet Great Britain and Europe persisted
in regarding the Prussian army--the Prussian nation in
arms, achieving national aims by force controlled and
directed by the Crown--as a luxury of the monarchy, and
a dangerous but superfluous tool in the hands of un-
scrupulous ministers. The truest reply to the secret
dispatch of Lord Clarendon would have been a volume
of select extracts from the memoranda of Frederick
William 1. , the writings of Frederick the Great, the docu-
ments of the Prussian reformers--vom Stein, Scharnhorst,
the Humboldts--bound up with the salient passages from
Clausewitz's Vom Krjege, and the correspondence of Moltke
and Bismarck himself.
The evidence for the principles of Prussianism both in
theory and fact had lain open for more than a generation
to all who cared to study it. Carlyle's Frederick, which
appeared between 1858 and 1865, was a noble and brilliant
contribution to historical literature, but the connection
between the Frederick portrayed by Carlyle and the Prussia
of the age of Bismarck was not grasped by the generation
that read Carlyle. The diplomatists of the Clarendon
School, of Cobden and Bright, of Gladstone and Disraeli,
continued to regard the Continent and the European
State system with the eyes of tradition, insularism, or ideal-
ism. Yet Bismarck had been there since 1851. Since
1862 his speeches were reported and his acts were written
out in language unmistakable. The North German
Confederation was there in full daylight, and the Prussian
General Staff and army had proved their principles and
their power to carry them out. Morier in 1868 drew up
for Lord Stanley a memorandum on the German situation,
in which the truth is told with remarkable accuracy. A
few sentences may be quoted here :--
'The motive power we seek resides, of course, in the Chancellor;
not however in the office, but in the individual Bismarck who at
present fills the office. . . . The Federal Council, after the fashion
of diplomatic congresses, works underground and away from the
light of day . . . hence the work is bona fide got through at the
B. R
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BISMARCK
green table. Under these circumstances, to those acquainted with
the personal prestige of Bismarck, his complete mastery of the
situation in the Federal Council is no matter of surprise. . . . He
is among his Federal compeers facile prineefs, not merely in the
higher branches of statesmanship, but as a skilful workman in the
details of administration. . . . Certain it is that no law and no
measure comes out of the Federal Council in any other shape than
that the Federal Chancellor desires . . . The intrinsic vitality of
the national forces as compared with those opposed to them, the
recognition by Bismarck of this fact, and lastly, the accident of the
hitter's Wolseyan lust for power; for the more we penetrate into
the intricacies of the North German Constitution, the more we
become convinced that its whole framework is built up with refer-
ence to the exceptional and extraordinary position of the Chan-
cellor . . . and to the concentration into his own hands of the vast
administrative power vested in the Federal Chancellor's depart-
ment. . . . The government of North Germany is tending daily
to become as much a personal government as that of France. . . .
No man can be a bona fide leader of a great Liberal party without
faith in Liberal principles, and not one mustard seed of such faith
exists in Count Bismarck's nature. '--{Life of Morier, ii. pp. 103-23. )
Throughout Morier emphasised the secrets of Bismarck's
power--Prussia and Prussianism, and, secondly, National
Liberalism bent on unification. Morier had. been for
fifteen years a voice crying in the wilderness. He was
hated and feared by Bismarck because he knew and told
the truth about Prussianism. He was distrusted in
England at the Foreign Office because he told his chiefs
what they did not wish to hear, and had the embarrassing
gift of predicting failures and the reasons for them.
The real problem for the Europe of 1867-70 lay in the
undeniable antithesis between the State as Power, based
on the nation in arms, carrying out a policy in which might
made right, and the State as Right, striving to base inter-
national relations on law, morality, and the conscience of
self-governing democracies. But the problem was neither
solved nor even simplified by a grotesque and unpardonable
ignorance of Germany's avowed ambitions and the sources
from which it drew its strength, or by the supposition that
Germany standing on the threshold of achievement would
listen for one moment to a suggestion of throwing down
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 259
the one weapon by which achievement could be made
good.
Bismarck intended to unify Germany and alter not
merely the Balance of Power but rearrange the Continent
on a different system, the capital feature of which would
be a German hegemony controlled by Prussia. In 1868,
when Morier wrote, Moltke on foot had examined the
Franco-German frontier from end to end. By 1870 the
reorganisation of the Federal forces was practically com-
plete; the strategic railways carried out; the military
material collected, and mobilisation could be effected
within three weeks or less. France swarmed with German
spies. At Berlin every move in France was watched with
the eyes of the hunter on his prey. The war with France
was being as remorselessly prepared as the war of 1866
with Austria, and with all the benefit of the experience of
'64 and '66. The Chief of the Staff knew that it would
probably come on Prussia like a thief in the night. Char-
acter, personality, and power of work--these two men,
Bismarck and Moltke, were the quintessence of Prussianism
in the combination of these qualities. And they had at
their disposal a nation brimming with capacity, fired with
the faith that can move mountains, and ready to work
itself to the bone in disciplined toil.
Two other quotations are relevant to the general situa-
tion. Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Clarendon on January
30, 1870 :--
'M. Ollivier was particularly alive to the importance
of not exposing France to the appearance of being slighted;
in fact, he would not conceal from me that under present
circumstances a public rebuff from Prussia would be fatal.
"Un echec," he said, " c'est la guerre! "' 'I could see,'
wrote Lord A. Loftus on March 12, 1870, 'that Count
Bismarck has no fear of the Russian policy towards Prussia,
so long as the Emperor lives and Prince Gortchakov re-
mains minister. '
After 1867 the external and internal situation was dis-
quieting and depressing. In Bavaria Prince Hohenlohe,
manfully striving against the Ultramontanes and the
Particularists to find a form of union which would
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BISMARCK
preserve the autonomy of Bavaria, was obliged to resign
(March 7, 1870), and a clerical administration under Bray
took his place. In Wurttemberg, a stronghold of Radical-
ism and the Deutsche Volkspartei, the anti-union oppo-
sition was so democratic that the Tsar Alexander n. was
seriously concerned for the throne of his kinsmen at
Stuttgart. In the Reichstag there was much bitter
criticism. Bismarck was so exasperated that he had re-
course to his familiar device of tendering his resignation
on the ground that one man could not reconcile the King,
eight ministers, and three Parliaments. But his chief
difficulties were not with the Reichstag but with the irre-
concilable dynasticism of the deposed rulers--the Hano-
verian in particular. The famous' Reptile Fund' derived
its name from the sequestration of a part of the royal pro-
perty of Hanover to a fund for counteracting Hanoverian-
ism. 'The reptiles must be pursued into their lairs. '
Junkertum was a continuous stumbling-block. Edwin
von Manteuffel, the chief of the military cabinet, was sup-
ported by a powerful party as likely to be a much better
Chancellor. The Memoirs of Stosch and Bernhardi reveal
the under-currents swirling round the monarchy. Bis-
marck retorted by attacks on feminine and English in-
fluence. The jackals round the lion yapped, with the
lion's encouragement, in the press controlled by the
Press Bureau and the Reptile Fund.
Foreign policy and the international situation kept
Bismarck very anxious. The irrepressible Beust had trans-
ferred his services from Dresden to Vienna. Beust meant
more mischief than Austria was capable of carrying out.
German historians have sedulously built up the theory
that between 1868 and 1870 Prussia was being steadily
encircled by three hostile states. Hence the comfortable
conclusion that the war with France was a defensive effort
against an offensive assault, anticipated by Prussia and
thrust upon her against her will.
In support of this view there are certain undeniable
facts.
In the autumn of 1867 Napoleon met the King of
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. Francis Joseph
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 261
returned the visit at Paris. The entente between Austria
and France was, however, confined to after-dinner toasts.
Menabrea in Italy drew up the project of a triple alliance,
and in 1868 and 1869 there was much discussion between
Vienna, Florence, and Paris. The general belief at Berlin
that an alliance between France and Italy had been con-
cluded was erroneous. All that Napoleon had on paper
was (September 1869) a letter from Victor Emmanuel and
another from Francis Joseph approving of the idea of com-
mon action at some future date. He showed these letters
in July 1870 to the Council at Paris that had war and peace
in its hands, and they profoundly influenced the decision.
The Council afterwards accepted Napoleon's interpretation
--wholly unjustified, as the events proved--that they were
equivalent to a solemn pledge. The visit of General
Le Flo to Petersburg in 1869 caused much perturbation,
but Le F16 discovered that Russia was only interested in the
question of ' revising' the clauses in the Treaty of 1856
which closed the Black Sea to Russia. Bismarck truly
told Lord A. Loftus that 'he attributed no importance
to the reports of a Franco-Russian entente. ' The per-
manent difficulty was Rome. Napoleon declined to give
the one guarantee that would secure Italy's enthusiastic
aid--the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome.
The Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza, visited Paris
in the spring of 1870, and General Lebrun was sent to
Vienna. Schemes of military co-operation were discussed,
but when (June 15) Lebrun left Vienna no formal alliance
had been drawn up, nor was there a military convention in
existence pledging either France or Austria to combined
action. No military convention with Italy was in exist-
ence nor had a formal political alliance been made. The
danger of the situation lay in the critical position of the
Napoleonic Empire, summed up in Lord Lyons' letter of
May 6, 1870 :--
'It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is a
moment at which it would be safe to defy France. On
the contrary, a war unmistakably provoked by Prussia
would be hailed by many as a welcome diversion from
internal difficulties. So far as I can judge, Ollivier
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BISMARCK
is not the man to shrink from one? (The italics are Lord
Lyons'. )
So far, no evidence has been forthcoming to prove that
Italy, Austria, and France had agreed to unite in an attack
on Prussia or the North German Confederation. The
'conspiracy' to force an offensive war on an unwilling
Germany had in fact not been made. The justification of
Bismarck's action, wherever it may be placed, cannot rest
on the defined menace of a Triple Alliance, ready to strike
at an agreed hour for agreed objects by agreed and con-
certed action.
Bismarck was perfectly well informed of these facts.
The intelligence departments of the Foreign Office and
the General Staff did not accept the gossip of diplomatists
and journalists as the basis of their policy and strategy,
though they utilised it, with much embroidery, in the
newspapers controlled from the Chancery to organise
German public opinion. On the other hand, the evidence
that Bismarck after 1866 regarded a war with France as
inevitable and desirable is overwhelming, and he has com-
pleted it in his own Memoirs. After 1866 the political task
was to isolate France, for the General Staff demanded the
isolation of the foe as the condition of a crushing military
decision. Bismarck started by giving Moltke the neces-
sary time. For three years he sedulously damped down
the Chauvinists in the Reichstag. For three years the
Chancellor breathed peace and goodwill. The argument
for unification through war was clinched by the course
of events in Germany since 1866. Without war uni-
fication was either impossible or only attainable by pulling
the North German Confederation to pieces and recon-
structing it to suit the anti-Prussian feeling of the south.
In the Reichstag the National Liberals, toiling at unifying
legislation, had not abandoned the principle of achieving
ministerial responsibility and responsible parliamentary
government in a Federal and united Germany. In March
1869 Twesten and the Radical Left demanded the estab-
lishment of four responsible Federal ministers--finance,
war, the navy, and commerce--to sit beside the Federal
Chancellor as colleagues, not as the subordinate executive
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 263
heads of Chancery departments. The proposal, which
meant a re-writing of the Federal Constitution, was only
defeated with the help of the Conservatives by seventeen
votes. For three years Bismarck at Berlin and in the soli-
tude of Varzin studied Germany and the problem. War
alone would smash down, he concluded and rightly, the
obstinate obstacles to the Prussian solution. So long as
France was there, the south would be reinforced in its
stubborn reluctance to enter the Confederation except on
its own terms. War was necessary also as much to complete
the defeat of Liberalism as to defeat France. In May 1870
Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag of the embogging of the
work of unification in the sand of Particularism, of the
States, and of parties, and of the German right to crush
under a foot of iron every obstacle to the establishment of
the German nation in all its splendour and power. The
war of 1870 foretold the nadir of Liberalism in Europe.
Russia was in Bismarck's pocket. After 1867 Bismarck's
system of foreign policy pivoted more surely than before
on a close understanding with Petersburg. It is probable
that in 1866 Russia's acquiescence in the Treaty of Prague
had been secured by an undertaking to permit the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity. It is
certain that Bismarck secured Russia's benevolent neu-
trality in 1870 by inviting Russia to denounce the pro-
hibitive clauses: and the undertaking had probably been
given in the spring of 1870, if not earlier. Such a denun-
ciation would at once put Great Britain out of action; it
meant that "Austria, a signatory to the Treaty of 1856,
and bound by a secret alliance with England and France,
dating from 1856, to resist the revision of the Black Sea
articles by force, would have Russia on her back if she took
action either against Russia or Prussia. Bismarck's refusal
to intervene in the Italian problem was not due to in-
difference but to calculation. So long as France kept her
troops in Rome a Franco-Italian alliance was out of the
question. If circumstances required, Prussia could, as in
1866, buy Italy for a price; on the other hand, the
increasing volume of opposition to the Vatican Council
in Germany offered the opportunity to gratify German
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BISMARCK
Protestants and Catholics by breaking with the Papacy.
Bismarck therefore held his hand.
The neutrality of Belgium created a powerful lever on
Great Britain. The General Staff at Berlin preferred for
military reasons that Belgium should remain neutral.
When Bismarck published in The limes on July 25, 1870,
Benedetti's damning letter with its crude revelation of
Napoleon's ambitions and proposals, and followed it up
by a Prussian guarantee of Belgium's security, he practically
obtained British neutrality. 'Louis' was certainly going
to pay dearly for his intervention in 1866.
So far then from Prussia by the spring of 1870 being
hemmed in and isolated, it was France that was hemmed
in. The only alliances Bismarck required were the military
conventions with the south, and these had been secured
in 1866. Moltke assured him that, humanly speaking, if
a united Germany fought France in a ring fence victory
was certain. The ring fence was practically complete.
It was not enough, however, to hem France in. She
must be either coerced or lured into declaring war. The
war could then be proclaimed a defensive one, on behalf of
German honour, security, and independence. France the
aggressor, pacific Prussia the victim of her vanity and
ambition.
This attitude was essential. King William still had a
conscience, even if, as Bismarck said in 1869, ' our master
to-day has changed his tune from that in 1862; he has
drunk from the chalice of popularity and refuses to break
it. ' But the south must be brought in, fired with the
enthusiasm for 'Germany in danger. ' Neutral public
opinion must be influenced from the start to tolerate, per-
haps demand, the chastisement of France. Bismarck under-
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff. He knew the men with
whom he had to deal: Napoleon, ill, vacillating, swayed
by every group in turn; Ollivier, high-minded, weak, and
not master of his cabinet; the reckless Duc de Gramont,
ultramontane to his finger-tips, who replaced the cool-
headed Daru in May; behind them the Empress and the
clerical camarilla, and in Paris the boulevard patriotism
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 265
de cafe-concert, vain, ignorant, the dupe of its government
and itself.
Spain could complete the isolation of France. Cer-
tainly Bismarck's luck was extraordinary, for just when
Prussia needed a revolution the Spaniards obligingly pro-
vided one. In 1868 Queen Isabella abdicated. The
Spanish throne was vacant. Who was to fill it?
The complete story of the Hohenzollern candidature
has never been told. It probably never will, for the secret
may be concealed in the archives of Friedrichsruhe, but
more probably was buried with Bismarck. But the main
points are clear, and they conclusively contradict the Prus-
sian version accepted for a decade because the refutation was
not available. Whether Prim and Salazar started the idea
of placing Leopold or Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmar-
ingen, the elder or the third son of Anthony of Hohen-
zollern, and the brothers of Charles, ruler in Roumania,
or whether the idea was inspired by Bismarck, is of historical
interest but not of political importance. We know now
that in February 1869 Villanueva came from Spain to
Berlin and had a long interview with the Chancellor; in
March Th. von Bernhardi left for a special mission to
Spain; in September 1869 Salazar was introduced by
Werthern, the Prussian minister at Munich, to Prince
Anthony, and suggested the throne for Prince Leopold; in
February 1870 Salazar returned and pressed the candidature
on King William and Prince Anthony, who were not favour-
able to the idea; Bismarck on February 27 drew up a
confidential report in which he strongly supported the
proposal; on March 15 a Council was held at which Moltke,
Roon, Schleinitz, Thile, Delbriick, Bismarck, the King,
and Prince Anthony and Leopold were present; at this
Council Delbriick asked Moltke ' Are we ready if Napoleon
takes it ill? ' and Moltke simply nodded; the Hohen-
zollerns hesitated, attracted by the prospects, repelled by
the dangers of so ambitious a stroke; Bismarck sent Lothar
Bucher and Major Versen on a secret mission to Spain in
April; to Prince Anthony's deep regret, neither of his avail-
able sons would accept; the affair which seemed to be closed
was renewed in May as the result of Bucher and Versen's
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BISMARCK
mission, and thanks to a second mission of Bucher's, and
Salazar's importunity, supported by Bismarck's persistent
pressure, Prince Leopold finally consented probably by the
end of May, definitely on June 19; and, lastly, on June 21,
'after a hard struggle,' King William also consented. So
far the matter had been kept a profound secret. Olozaga,
the Spanish minister at Paris, was quite in the dark; Prim,
however, instead of carrying the business through and
presenting Europe with a fait accompli, as Bismarck pro-
bably intended and Salazar expected, prorogued the
Cortes till October 31. He seems to have lost his nerve at
this point, and to have hoped to talk Napoleon over during
the summer at Vichy. But the secret was either betrayed
or deliberately let out, and on July 3 was definitively
known at Paris. .
Bismarck was perfectly well aware that France would
not accept the Hohenzollern candidature. The King of
Roumania duly noted in his diary the certainty of French
opposition, as far back as December 9, 1868, and on the
mere rumour of such a candidature in 1869 Napoleon
(May n) had sent Benedetti to Bismarck to indicate the
attitude of the French government. It is certain that
Bismarck intended to fling down a challenge to France,
and that in procuring the acceptance of the candidature by
his sovereign he was deliberately provoking a European war.
The argument that a Hohenzollern prince at Madrid would
drop hk Germanism and become a Spaniard when he
crossed the Pyrenees is worthless, and recent events in the
Near East confirm its worthlessness. Bismarck himself can
be put in the witness-box. In his report of February 27
he argued that among many advantages that acceptance
of the Spanish throne would bring--the prestige of the
Hohenzollerns elevated like the Habsburgs to a European
position, the strengthening of the monarchical principle,
the commercial concessions for German trade (as in Rou-
mania)--the military aspect was of great importance:--
'If Germany and France were at war,' he wrote, ' and
the position was that under Isabella, and if on the other
hand a government in sympathy with Germany existed,
the difference for us between these two situations may be
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 267
calculated at one to two army corps. In the former,
French troops would be released by Spain and be available
against Germany; in the latter, France would have to
detach an army corps to the (Spanish) frontier. '
In a word, Spain would complete the isolation of France
and open the Mediterranean to Germany. It was a case
of double or quits. If France acquiesced, Spain became
a Hohenzollern satrapy, possibly an ally in a future war; if
she refused, she must make the candidature a casus belli,
and force war on Prussia.
Bismarck's contention that the whole matter was a pure
family and dynastic matter is belied by his conduct and
arguments. If so, why all the secrecy? Why was it
necessary to discuss a pure family affair of a cadet branch
of the Hohenzollerns at a Prussian Council, at which it was
requisite to include the Federal Chancellor, the Chief of
the General Staff, the Minister of War, the Director of the
Federal Chancery, and the Under-Secretary of the Foreign
Department? In Bismarck's confidential report the
candidature was argued on grounds of high policy in which
the interests of Germany and Prussia were deeply con-
cerned, and refusal of the offer was represented to be
politically detrimental to Germany. Bismarck repeatedly
asserted that he had no locus standi officially to advise the
King in a dynastic concern. Yet for twelve months he
had used all his authority and power as Chancellor and
Minister-President to press Prince Anthony and his sove-
reign to accept. Bismarck's denial of knowledge of the
affair was a he. . In what capacity did he receive Villanueva,
send Bernhardi, Bucher, and Versen to Spain, and corre-
spond with the Crown Prince on the subject? The
original introduction of Salazar to Prince Anthony was
made by Werthern, certainly with Bismarck's consent and
probably at his instigation. Men in the diplomatic ser-
vice were broken by Bismarck for implicating the govern-
ment, without the Chancellor's authority, in a policy
that committed Prussia. Werthern would not have dared
to do what he did, unless he desired to be treated as
Arnim was later.
Bismarck's conduct throughout the affair was com-
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BISMARCK
petent, dictatorial, and absolutely unscrupulous, and his
behaviour was indicated in the letter, taken by Bucher to
Spain on June 11, the authenticity of which can be
accepted. He would maintain that officially he was not
concerned. Why should the Spaniards not offer the crown
to any one they pleased? Accordingly, he retired to
Varzin on April 14, and stayed there till May 21. Until
June 8 he was in Berlin and then retired to Varzin to be
out of the way, when 'the Spanish bomb' burst, and
stayed there till July 12. King William went for a cure
to Ems, and the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen were
at their country-house. Thile as under-secretary could
therefore reply to French questions that 'the Prussian
government was absolutely ignorant of this affair, which
did not exist for it. ' Thile who had been present at the
Council of March 15!
It is unnecessary to relate in detail the oft-told dramatic
story of the French government's action when the news
of the candidature became known. From July 3 onwards
French public opinion was in a fever of excitement and
indignation. The government recognised the challenge.
By sending Benedetti direct to King William at Ems they
succeeded in stripping the candidature of its family char-
acter. They deliberately fixed the responsibility on
Prussia, and on July 12, when Prince Anthony renounced
the candidature, with King William's acquiescence,
France had won a striking diplomatic success. King
William, indeed, confessed that the renunciation removed
a load of stone from his heart. The French government
feared, however, that Prince Leopold might imitate his
brother Prince Charles in 1866 in the Roumanian affair, re^
pudiate his father, and go to Spain. The Duc de Gramont
and Ollivier knew the character of the Prussian government
and of Bismarck, and were determined to stroke the t's and
dot the i's of the renunciation; they aimed at inflicting a
personal as well as a political humiliation on the Hohen-
zollern sovereign and his minister. Like a weak man
Gramont did not know where to stop. His insistence
that King William must give a guarantee that the candi-
dature would not be renewed, was made on his own re-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 269
sponsibility without communication to the Prime Minister,
or the Council of State, or, apparently, Napoleon himself.
King William, who had behaved correctly so far, and was
convinced that his acquiescence in the renunciation closed
the whole episode, naturally resented the French demand
as an insinuation against his royal good faith and as a deli-
berate attempt to pick a quarrel with Prussia. The
message through an aide-de-camp that the incident was
closed, and that he had nothing further to say, was some-
what curt but unobjectionable. It was not insulting nor
intended to be an insult. Gramont had by his folly
pledged France; much worse, he had given Bismarck his
chance.
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 253
to discover the soul, thought, and work of a nation in the
columns of the newspapers with which its women light
their stoves and the men their cigars. The entrenched
Philistia of Great Britain, regarding universities as places
where youths learned either to become gentlemen or book-
worms, and science as a harmless recreation for literary
institutes or the finger-staining drudgery of the apothe-
cary, persisted in regarding the German universities, where
the renaissance of the German mind was being completed,
as centres of dreamy idealism or the dreary laboratories
of an unintelligible theology. The apostle of sweet-
ness and light, Matthew Arnold, writing the classical
reports in which he foretold the coming supremacy of
Germany because, like the Italian renaissance, it strove to
combine the humanities with science, with 1866 staring
him in the face, believed that the French army in 1870
would smash the Prussian. So potent even on priestly
rebels of the House of Levi are the Idols of the Market-
place and of the Tribe. Colonel Stoffel, a tragic Cas-
sandra, if ever there was one, for three years warned his
government at Paris of what Prussia was preparing; but
the men like Marechal Niel, who had divined the truth,
either perished under the surgeon's knife or were impotent.
The Second Empire had justly forfeited the confidence of
thinking and toiling France; and the ears of the Tuileries
and the Quai d'Orsay were stuffed with clerical wax.
But the lower the barometer fell, the harder, with
Bismarck's kno-vledge, did the Great General Staff work.
Thanks to the Federal Chancellor, it was free from the
interference not merely of journalists or irresponsible
politicians but of a Cabinet which had never studied war
or regarded it as an unexpected disease, to be dealt with on
its symptoms when there could be no doubt it had broken
out. To Bismarck there were two certainties, and only
two, in an inscrutable world--the Prussian Crown and the
Prussian Army. The Prussian King was his affair, and on
him, as on the rocher de bronze, the compass of policy could
swing freely in the dirtiest weather. The time of blood
and iron had not passed. It was truer than ever in his
interpretation that the greatest question of the age, the
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BISMARCK
settlement with France, would not be settled by resolutions
in the Reichstag and the Zoll Parliament, the speeches of
Thiers, or the manufactured plebiscites of the Minister of
the Interior at Paris. The surgery of war was needed to
let the bad blood out in Germany. When some thousands
of Bavarians and Wurttembergers had fallen beside Prus-
sian, Saxon, Hanoverian, and Nassauer, the Empire would
be made. The iron crown of the Imperial Hohenstaufen
would not be picked up in the gutters of Frankfurt or
Berlin--that was the folly of 1848 and 1866--but on a
victorious battlefield in France.
The idea of disarmament had been in the air since 1868,
and Daru at Paris, Virchow and the Radicals at Berlin were
playing with it. But Lord Newton in his Life of Lord
Lyons has kindly lifted the blinds for us, and the instructive
episode in which the British government, inspired from
Paris, confidentially invited in the spring of 1870 Prussia
to join in a European disarmament can now be studied in
its entirety. Bismarck maintained a grave courtesy--he
was never gravely courteous with the realities of statecraft
or of fife--but the admirable essays of Lord Clarendon
must have stirred 'the irreverent merriment' that he
allowed himself when English pacifism was proved by the
sale of an ironclad to Prussia and the readiness to sell
another. These excellent insulars simply did not live in
the world of facts, and Bismarck put them aside with the
soothing firmness that self-control owes to a well-meaning
but hysterical woman.
Clarendon in 1864 had protested that he desired no
further intercourse with cet homme, sansfoi et sans hi; he
now appealed to Count Bismarck--' I am sure that a
statesman so liberal and far-sighted will admit without
regret'--a sentence the choice of the epithets in which is
delicious. Bismarck replied quietly,' that he did not dare
even to name the subject of the letter to the King. . . .
Coming from England it would make the worst impression
on him. ' He added 'that any weakening of Prussia's
power, any disturbance of the Balance of Power in Europe,
can hardly be for the interest of England'--and empha-
sised the formidable dangers that Prussia had to face from
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 255
France, Austria, Russia, and--a pretty stroke--Denmark.
'I saw,' wrote our ambassador, 'it was useless to pursue
the question further. ' In reality it was useless to have
raised it at all.
This is not a case of superior wisdom after the event.
When our Foreign Office suggested that Prussia should
disarm, it was asking Prussia to cease to be the Prussia of
Frederick the Great and Bismarck; it was further asking
that Prussia and Germany should abandon the ideal of
unification on Bismarckian lines. There was substantial
truth in Bismarck's contention that France was irrecon-
cilably hostile to German ambitions, and that this hostility
made the armed strength of Prussia a first condition of
security, and, though he did not say so, of attaining her end
in defiance of that hostility. If Lord A. Loftus had not
categorically informed our Foreign Office that north and
south would seize the first opportunity of agreement
between the two parties to unite, he was writing, as
Bismarck said in 1862, 'more nonsense to London than I
suspected. ' There was as little chance of the government
at Berlin abandoning this ideal of union, as there was of
England renouncing the union with Scotland and Ireland
on the suggestion of Berlin 'in the interest of European
peace and the Balance of Power,' or of the United States
abandoning American unity in 1861 or 1867, because it
suited the aristocrats of Great Britain and Europe. The
suggestion of renunciation was to the German mind an
impertinence which proved English jealousy. Lord Lyons,
Ollivier, Daru, Napoleon in. , the Empress Eugenie, Thiers,
the young Gambetta, who had leaped into fame over the
proces Baudouin, could all have told Clarendon that
neither the Second Empire nor France would permit the
union of North and South Germany--the establishment
on their frontier of a military empire, controlled by
Bismarck. Had our Foreign Office informed the Quai
d'Orsay that the condition of disarmament was the accept-
ance by France of a German Empire from the Alps to the
Baltic, the reply would have been truly enough that it was
a command to Napoleon to abdicate. We had no answer
to Bismarck's interpolation that he could have settled
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BISMARCK
with Napoleon by letting him have Belgium and Luxem-
burg--Belgium, Palmerston's creation of 1839. From
1867 to 1870 our Foreign Office, like every other Foreign
Office, was kept in a perpetual fret and fever by Napoleon's
direct and indirect efforts to pave the way for annexing
Belgium, and Belgium did not settle the problem of the
Rhine. Alsace and Lorraine were to all Germans 'un-
redeemed Germany'; they were to German Nationalism
what Rome was to Italian Nationalism. Nothing but
French bayonets and the chassepots of Mentana kept Italy
out of Rome. Nothing but the chassepots kept the French
flag flying at Strasburg and Metz; nothing but German
bayonets would get the Germans across the upper Rhine.
If Lord Clarendon did not recognise these plain realities
he and his colleagues at Downing Street were simply de-
ceiving themselves. It was easy for a British minister and
British public opinion--the combined expression of a
triumphant Nationalism--to dismiss these distressing
realities as the symptoms of the diseased mind. The
poultice of disarmament did not and could not pluck from
German- and French memory a rooted sorrow, and the
idea that it could was neither statesmanship nor even
common sense.
The error went far deeper and much further back into
the history of the European State system. Bismarck could
smother the proposal in a tangle of detail: but the prin-
ciple of disarmament cut down to the bone and marrow
of the Prussian State. A progressive disarmament levied
on the European States like a progressive income-tax, with
a super-tax for all exceeding some fixed limit, ignored the
fundamentals of the situation. Was Prussia expected to
give up, or was she not, the law of 1814 and the reorganised
military system of 1862-66 by which every Prussian male
was required to receive military training? How could
Prussia ' disarm' without abandoning this principle? The
Prussian army of 1867 was simply a scientific organisation
to realise this fundamental of her civic polity, at a minimum
of cost and friction to the civil population and the crvSl
state. The Prussian State was the outcome of the prin-
ciple--Das Folk in Waffen; the army was not as in Great
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION. 257
Britain a state mackintosh that could be thrown off in fine,
and rediscovered from the national cupboard for use in
dirty, weather. Yet Great Britain and Europe persisted
in regarding the Prussian army--the Prussian nation in
arms, achieving national aims by force controlled and
directed by the Crown--as a luxury of the monarchy, and
a dangerous but superfluous tool in the hands of un-
scrupulous ministers. The truest reply to the secret
dispatch of Lord Clarendon would have been a volume
of select extracts from the memoranda of Frederick
William 1. , the writings of Frederick the Great, the docu-
ments of the Prussian reformers--vom Stein, Scharnhorst,
the Humboldts--bound up with the salient passages from
Clausewitz's Vom Krjege, and the correspondence of Moltke
and Bismarck himself.
The evidence for the principles of Prussianism both in
theory and fact had lain open for more than a generation
to all who cared to study it. Carlyle's Frederick, which
appeared between 1858 and 1865, was a noble and brilliant
contribution to historical literature, but the connection
between the Frederick portrayed by Carlyle and the Prussia
of the age of Bismarck was not grasped by the generation
that read Carlyle. The diplomatists of the Clarendon
School, of Cobden and Bright, of Gladstone and Disraeli,
continued to regard the Continent and the European
State system with the eyes of tradition, insularism, or ideal-
ism. Yet Bismarck had been there since 1851. Since
1862 his speeches were reported and his acts were written
out in language unmistakable. The North German
Confederation was there in full daylight, and the Prussian
General Staff and army had proved their principles and
their power to carry them out. Morier in 1868 drew up
for Lord Stanley a memorandum on the German situation,
in which the truth is told with remarkable accuracy. A
few sentences may be quoted here :--
'The motive power we seek resides, of course, in the Chancellor;
not however in the office, but in the individual Bismarck who at
present fills the office. . . . The Federal Council, after the fashion
of diplomatic congresses, works underground and away from the
light of day . . . hence the work is bona fide got through at the
B. R
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BISMARCK
green table. Under these circumstances, to those acquainted with
the personal prestige of Bismarck, his complete mastery of the
situation in the Federal Council is no matter of surprise. . . . He
is among his Federal compeers facile prineefs, not merely in the
higher branches of statesmanship, but as a skilful workman in the
details of administration. . . . Certain it is that no law and no
measure comes out of the Federal Council in any other shape than
that the Federal Chancellor desires . . . The intrinsic vitality of
the national forces as compared with those opposed to them, the
recognition by Bismarck of this fact, and lastly, the accident of the
hitter's Wolseyan lust for power; for the more we penetrate into
the intricacies of the North German Constitution, the more we
become convinced that its whole framework is built up with refer-
ence to the exceptional and extraordinary position of the Chan-
cellor . . . and to the concentration into his own hands of the vast
administrative power vested in the Federal Chancellor's depart-
ment. . . . The government of North Germany is tending daily
to become as much a personal government as that of France. . . .
No man can be a bona fide leader of a great Liberal party without
faith in Liberal principles, and not one mustard seed of such faith
exists in Count Bismarck's nature. '--{Life of Morier, ii. pp. 103-23. )
Throughout Morier emphasised the secrets of Bismarck's
power--Prussia and Prussianism, and, secondly, National
Liberalism bent on unification. Morier had. been for
fifteen years a voice crying in the wilderness. He was
hated and feared by Bismarck because he knew and told
the truth about Prussianism. He was distrusted in
England at the Foreign Office because he told his chiefs
what they did not wish to hear, and had the embarrassing
gift of predicting failures and the reasons for them.
The real problem for the Europe of 1867-70 lay in the
undeniable antithesis between the State as Power, based
on the nation in arms, carrying out a policy in which might
made right, and the State as Right, striving to base inter-
national relations on law, morality, and the conscience of
self-governing democracies. But the problem was neither
solved nor even simplified by a grotesque and unpardonable
ignorance of Germany's avowed ambitions and the sources
from which it drew its strength, or by the supposition that
Germany standing on the threshold of achievement would
listen for one moment to a suggestion of throwing down
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 259
the one weapon by which achievement could be made
good.
Bismarck intended to unify Germany and alter not
merely the Balance of Power but rearrange the Continent
on a different system, the capital feature of which would
be a German hegemony controlled by Prussia. In 1868,
when Morier wrote, Moltke on foot had examined the
Franco-German frontier from end to end. By 1870 the
reorganisation of the Federal forces was practically com-
plete; the strategic railways carried out; the military
material collected, and mobilisation could be effected
within three weeks or less. France swarmed with German
spies. At Berlin every move in France was watched with
the eyes of the hunter on his prey. The war with France
was being as remorselessly prepared as the war of 1866
with Austria, and with all the benefit of the experience of
'64 and '66. The Chief of the Staff knew that it would
probably come on Prussia like a thief in the night. Char-
acter, personality, and power of work--these two men,
Bismarck and Moltke, were the quintessence of Prussianism
in the combination of these qualities. And they had at
their disposal a nation brimming with capacity, fired with
the faith that can move mountains, and ready to work
itself to the bone in disciplined toil.
Two other quotations are relevant to the general situa-
tion. Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Clarendon on January
30, 1870 :--
'M. Ollivier was particularly alive to the importance
of not exposing France to the appearance of being slighted;
in fact, he would not conceal from me that under present
circumstances a public rebuff from Prussia would be fatal.
"Un echec," he said, " c'est la guerre! "' 'I could see,'
wrote Lord A. Loftus on March 12, 1870, 'that Count
Bismarck has no fear of the Russian policy towards Prussia,
so long as the Emperor lives and Prince Gortchakov re-
mains minister. '
After 1867 the external and internal situation was dis-
quieting and depressing. In Bavaria Prince Hohenlohe,
manfully striving against the Ultramontanes and the
Particularists to find a form of union which would
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BISMARCK
preserve the autonomy of Bavaria, was obliged to resign
(March 7, 1870), and a clerical administration under Bray
took his place. In Wurttemberg, a stronghold of Radical-
ism and the Deutsche Volkspartei, the anti-union oppo-
sition was so democratic that the Tsar Alexander n. was
seriously concerned for the throne of his kinsmen at
Stuttgart. In the Reichstag there was much bitter
criticism. Bismarck was so exasperated that he had re-
course to his familiar device of tendering his resignation
on the ground that one man could not reconcile the King,
eight ministers, and three Parliaments. But his chief
difficulties were not with the Reichstag but with the irre-
concilable dynasticism of the deposed rulers--the Hano-
verian in particular. The famous' Reptile Fund' derived
its name from the sequestration of a part of the royal pro-
perty of Hanover to a fund for counteracting Hanoverian-
ism. 'The reptiles must be pursued into their lairs. '
Junkertum was a continuous stumbling-block. Edwin
von Manteuffel, the chief of the military cabinet, was sup-
ported by a powerful party as likely to be a much better
Chancellor. The Memoirs of Stosch and Bernhardi reveal
the under-currents swirling round the monarchy. Bis-
marck retorted by attacks on feminine and English in-
fluence. The jackals round the lion yapped, with the
lion's encouragement, in the press controlled by the
Press Bureau and the Reptile Fund.
Foreign policy and the international situation kept
Bismarck very anxious. The irrepressible Beust had trans-
ferred his services from Dresden to Vienna. Beust meant
more mischief than Austria was capable of carrying out.
German historians have sedulously built up the theory
that between 1868 and 1870 Prussia was being steadily
encircled by three hostile states. Hence the comfortable
conclusion that the war with France was a defensive effort
against an offensive assault, anticipated by Prussia and
thrust upon her against her will.
In support of this view there are certain undeniable
facts.
In the autumn of 1867 Napoleon met the King of
Wurttemberg at Ulm, the King of Bavaria at Augsburg,
and the Emperor of Austria at Salzburg. Francis Joseph
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 261
returned the visit at Paris. The entente between Austria
and France was, however, confined to after-dinner toasts.
Menabrea in Italy drew up the project of a triple alliance,
and in 1868 and 1869 there was much discussion between
Vienna, Florence, and Paris. The general belief at Berlin
that an alliance between France and Italy had been con-
cluded was erroneous. All that Napoleon had on paper
was (September 1869) a letter from Victor Emmanuel and
another from Francis Joseph approving of the idea of com-
mon action at some future date. He showed these letters
in July 1870 to the Council at Paris that had war and peace
in its hands, and they profoundly influenced the decision.
The Council afterwards accepted Napoleon's interpretation
--wholly unjustified, as the events proved--that they were
equivalent to a solemn pledge. The visit of General
Le Flo to Petersburg in 1869 caused much perturbation,
but Le F16 discovered that Russia was only interested in the
question of ' revising' the clauses in the Treaty of 1856
which closed the Black Sea to Russia. Bismarck truly
told Lord A. Loftus that 'he attributed no importance
to the reports of a Franco-Russian entente. ' The per-
manent difficulty was Rome. Napoleon declined to give
the one guarantee that would secure Italy's enthusiastic
aid--the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome.
The Archduke Albert, the victor of Custozza, visited Paris
in the spring of 1870, and General Lebrun was sent to
Vienna. Schemes of military co-operation were discussed,
but when (June 15) Lebrun left Vienna no formal alliance
had been drawn up, nor was there a military convention in
existence pledging either France or Austria to combined
action. No military convention with Italy was in exist-
ence nor had a formal political alliance been made. The
danger of the situation lay in the critical position of the
Napoleonic Empire, summed up in Lord Lyons' letter of
May 6, 1870 :--
'It would be quite a mistake to suppose that this is a
moment at which it would be safe to defy France. On
the contrary, a war unmistakably provoked by Prussia
would be hailed by many as a welcome diversion from
internal difficulties. So far as I can judge, Ollivier
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BISMARCK
is not the man to shrink from one? (The italics are Lord
Lyons'. )
So far, no evidence has been forthcoming to prove that
Italy, Austria, and France had agreed to unite in an attack
on Prussia or the North German Confederation. The
'conspiracy' to force an offensive war on an unwilling
Germany had in fact not been made. The justification of
Bismarck's action, wherever it may be placed, cannot rest
on the defined menace of a Triple Alliance, ready to strike
at an agreed hour for agreed objects by agreed and con-
certed action.
Bismarck was perfectly well informed of these facts.
The intelligence departments of the Foreign Office and
the General Staff did not accept the gossip of diplomatists
and journalists as the basis of their policy and strategy,
though they utilised it, with much embroidery, in the
newspapers controlled from the Chancery to organise
German public opinion. On the other hand, the evidence
that Bismarck after 1866 regarded a war with France as
inevitable and desirable is overwhelming, and he has com-
pleted it in his own Memoirs. After 1866 the political task
was to isolate France, for the General Staff demanded the
isolation of the foe as the condition of a crushing military
decision. Bismarck started by giving Moltke the neces-
sary time. For three years he sedulously damped down
the Chauvinists in the Reichstag. For three years the
Chancellor breathed peace and goodwill. The argument
for unification through war was clinched by the course
of events in Germany since 1866. Without war uni-
fication was either impossible or only attainable by pulling
the North German Confederation to pieces and recon-
structing it to suit the anti-Prussian feeling of the south.
In the Reichstag the National Liberals, toiling at unifying
legislation, had not abandoned the principle of achieving
ministerial responsibility and responsible parliamentary
government in a Federal and united Germany. In March
1869 Twesten and the Radical Left demanded the estab-
lishment of four responsible Federal ministers--finance,
war, the navy, and commerce--to sit beside the Federal
Chancellor as colleagues, not as the subordinate executive
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 263
heads of Chancery departments. The proposal, which
meant a re-writing of the Federal Constitution, was only
defeated with the help of the Conservatives by seventeen
votes. For three years Bismarck at Berlin and in the soli-
tude of Varzin studied Germany and the problem. War
alone would smash down, he concluded and rightly, the
obstinate obstacles to the Prussian solution. So long as
France was there, the south would be reinforced in its
stubborn reluctance to enter the Confederation except on
its own terms. War was necessary also as much to complete
the defeat of Liberalism as to defeat France. In May 1870
Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag of the embogging of the
work of unification in the sand of Particularism, of the
States, and of parties, and of the German right to crush
under a foot of iron every obstacle to the establishment of
the German nation in all its splendour and power. The
war of 1870 foretold the nadir of Liberalism in Europe.
Russia was in Bismarck's pocket. After 1867 Bismarck's
system of foreign policy pivoted more surely than before
on a close understanding with Petersburg. It is probable
that in 1866 Russia's acquiescence in the Treaty of Prague
had been secured by an undertaking to permit the revision
of the Treaty of 1856 at a favourable opportunity. It is
certain that Bismarck secured Russia's benevolent neu-
trality in 1870 by inviting Russia to denounce the pro-
hibitive clauses: and the undertaking had probably been
given in the spring of 1870, if not earlier. Such a denun-
ciation would at once put Great Britain out of action; it
meant that "Austria, a signatory to the Treaty of 1856,
and bound by a secret alliance with England and France,
dating from 1856, to resist the revision of the Black Sea
articles by force, would have Russia on her back if she took
action either against Russia or Prussia. Bismarck's refusal
to intervene in the Italian problem was not due to in-
difference but to calculation. So long as France kept her
troops in Rome a Franco-Italian alliance was out of the
question. If circumstances required, Prussia could, as in
1866, buy Italy for a price; on the other hand, the
increasing volume of opposition to the Vatican Council
in Germany offered the opportunity to gratify German
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BISMARCK
Protestants and Catholics by breaking with the Papacy.
Bismarck therefore held his hand.
The neutrality of Belgium created a powerful lever on
Great Britain. The General Staff at Berlin preferred for
military reasons that Belgium should remain neutral.
When Bismarck published in The limes on July 25, 1870,
Benedetti's damning letter with its crude revelation of
Napoleon's ambitions and proposals, and followed it up
by a Prussian guarantee of Belgium's security, he practically
obtained British neutrality. 'Louis' was certainly going
to pay dearly for his intervention in 1866.
So far then from Prussia by the spring of 1870 being
hemmed in and isolated, it was France that was hemmed
in. The only alliances Bismarck required were the military
conventions with the south, and these had been secured
in 1866. Moltke assured him that, humanly speaking, if
a united Germany fought France in a ring fence victory
was certain. The ring fence was practically complete.
It was not enough, however, to hem France in. She
must be either coerced or lured into declaring war. The
war could then be proclaimed a defensive one, on behalf of
German honour, security, and independence. France the
aggressor, pacific Prussia the victim of her vanity and
ambition.
This attitude was essential. King William still had a
conscience, even if, as Bismarck said in 1869, ' our master
to-day has changed his tune from that in 1862; he has
drunk from the chalice of popularity and refuses to break
it. ' But the south must be brought in, fired with the
enthusiasm for 'Germany in danger. ' Neutral public
opinion must be influenced from the start to tolerate, per-
haps demand, the chastisement of France. Bismarck under-
stood as well as Lord Lyons that the Napoleonic Empire
could not stand another rebuff. He knew the men with
whom he had to deal: Napoleon, ill, vacillating, swayed
by every group in turn; Ollivier, high-minded, weak, and
not master of his cabinet; the reckless Duc de Gramont,
ultramontane to his finger-tips, who replaced the cool-
headed Daru in May; behind them the Empress and the
clerical camarilla, and in Paris the boulevard patriotism
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 265
de cafe-concert, vain, ignorant, the dupe of its government
and itself.
Spain could complete the isolation of France. Cer-
tainly Bismarck's luck was extraordinary, for just when
Prussia needed a revolution the Spaniards obligingly pro-
vided one. In 1868 Queen Isabella abdicated. The
Spanish throne was vacant. Who was to fill it?
The complete story of the Hohenzollern candidature
has never been told. It probably never will, for the secret
may be concealed in the archives of Friedrichsruhe, but
more probably was buried with Bismarck. But the main
points are clear, and they conclusively contradict the Prus-
sian version accepted for a decade because the refutation was
not available. Whether Prim and Salazar started the idea
of placing Leopold or Frederick of Hohenzollern-Sigmar-
ingen, the elder or the third son of Anthony of Hohen-
zollern, and the brothers of Charles, ruler in Roumania,
or whether the idea was inspired by Bismarck, is of historical
interest but not of political importance. We know now
that in February 1869 Villanueva came from Spain to
Berlin and had a long interview with the Chancellor; in
March Th. von Bernhardi left for a special mission to
Spain; in September 1869 Salazar was introduced by
Werthern, the Prussian minister at Munich, to Prince
Anthony, and suggested the throne for Prince Leopold; in
February 1870 Salazar returned and pressed the candidature
on King William and Prince Anthony, who were not favour-
able to the idea; Bismarck on February 27 drew up a
confidential report in which he strongly supported the
proposal; on March 15 a Council was held at which Moltke,
Roon, Schleinitz, Thile, Delbriick, Bismarck, the King,
and Prince Anthony and Leopold were present; at this
Council Delbriick asked Moltke ' Are we ready if Napoleon
takes it ill? ' and Moltke simply nodded; the Hohen-
zollerns hesitated, attracted by the prospects, repelled by
the dangers of so ambitious a stroke; Bismarck sent Lothar
Bucher and Major Versen on a secret mission to Spain in
April; to Prince Anthony's deep regret, neither of his avail-
able sons would accept; the affair which seemed to be closed
was renewed in May as the result of Bucher and Versen's
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BISMARCK
mission, and thanks to a second mission of Bucher's, and
Salazar's importunity, supported by Bismarck's persistent
pressure, Prince Leopold finally consented probably by the
end of May, definitely on June 19; and, lastly, on June 21,
'after a hard struggle,' King William also consented. So
far the matter had been kept a profound secret. Olozaga,
the Spanish minister at Paris, was quite in the dark; Prim,
however, instead of carrying the business through and
presenting Europe with a fait accompli, as Bismarck pro-
bably intended and Salazar expected, prorogued the
Cortes till October 31. He seems to have lost his nerve at
this point, and to have hoped to talk Napoleon over during
the summer at Vichy. But the secret was either betrayed
or deliberately let out, and on July 3 was definitively
known at Paris. .
Bismarck was perfectly well aware that France would
not accept the Hohenzollern candidature. The King of
Roumania duly noted in his diary the certainty of French
opposition, as far back as December 9, 1868, and on the
mere rumour of such a candidature in 1869 Napoleon
(May n) had sent Benedetti to Bismarck to indicate the
attitude of the French government. It is certain that
Bismarck intended to fling down a challenge to France,
and that in procuring the acceptance of the candidature by
his sovereign he was deliberately provoking a European war.
The argument that a Hohenzollern prince at Madrid would
drop hk Germanism and become a Spaniard when he
crossed the Pyrenees is worthless, and recent events in the
Near East confirm its worthlessness. Bismarck himself can
be put in the witness-box. In his report of February 27
he argued that among many advantages that acceptance
of the Spanish throne would bring--the prestige of the
Hohenzollerns elevated like the Habsburgs to a European
position, the strengthening of the monarchical principle,
the commercial concessions for German trade (as in Rou-
mania)--the military aspect was of great importance:--
'If Germany and France were at war,' he wrote, ' and
the position was that under Isabella, and if on the other
hand a government in sympathy with Germany existed,
the difference for us between these two situations may be
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 267
calculated at one to two army corps. In the former,
French troops would be released by Spain and be available
against Germany; in the latter, France would have to
detach an army corps to the (Spanish) frontier. '
In a word, Spain would complete the isolation of France
and open the Mediterranean to Germany. It was a case
of double or quits. If France acquiesced, Spain became
a Hohenzollern satrapy, possibly an ally in a future war; if
she refused, she must make the candidature a casus belli,
and force war on Prussia.
Bismarck's contention that the whole matter was a pure
family and dynastic matter is belied by his conduct and
arguments. If so, why all the secrecy? Why was it
necessary to discuss a pure family affair of a cadet branch
of the Hohenzollerns at a Prussian Council, at which it was
requisite to include the Federal Chancellor, the Chief of
the General Staff, the Minister of War, the Director of the
Federal Chancery, and the Under-Secretary of the Foreign
Department? In Bismarck's confidential report the
candidature was argued on grounds of high policy in which
the interests of Germany and Prussia were deeply con-
cerned, and refusal of the offer was represented to be
politically detrimental to Germany. Bismarck repeatedly
asserted that he had no locus standi officially to advise the
King in a dynastic concern. Yet for twelve months he
had used all his authority and power as Chancellor and
Minister-President to press Prince Anthony and his sove-
reign to accept. Bismarck's denial of knowledge of the
affair was a he. . In what capacity did he receive Villanueva,
send Bernhardi, Bucher, and Versen to Spain, and corre-
spond with the Crown Prince on the subject? The
original introduction of Salazar to Prince Anthony was
made by Werthern, certainly with Bismarck's consent and
probably at his instigation. Men in the diplomatic ser-
vice were broken by Bismarck for implicating the govern-
ment, without the Chancellor's authority, in a policy
that committed Prussia. Werthern would not have dared
to do what he did, unless he desired to be treated as
Arnim was later.
Bismarck's conduct throughout the affair was com-
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BISMARCK
petent, dictatorial, and absolutely unscrupulous, and his
behaviour was indicated in the letter, taken by Bucher to
Spain on June 11, the authenticity of which can be
accepted. He would maintain that officially he was not
concerned. Why should the Spaniards not offer the crown
to any one they pleased? Accordingly, he retired to
Varzin on April 14, and stayed there till May 21. Until
June 8 he was in Berlin and then retired to Varzin to be
out of the way, when 'the Spanish bomb' burst, and
stayed there till July 12. King William went for a cure
to Ems, and the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen were
at their country-house. Thile as under-secretary could
therefore reply to French questions that 'the Prussian
government was absolutely ignorant of this affair, which
did not exist for it. ' Thile who had been present at the
Council of March 15!
It is unnecessary to relate in detail the oft-told dramatic
story of the French government's action when the news
of the candidature became known. From July 3 onwards
French public opinion was in a fever of excitement and
indignation. The government recognised the challenge.
By sending Benedetti direct to King William at Ems they
succeeded in stripping the candidature of its family char-
acter. They deliberately fixed the responsibility on
Prussia, and on July 12, when Prince Anthony renounced
the candidature, with King William's acquiescence,
France had won a striking diplomatic success. King
William, indeed, confessed that the renunciation removed
a load of stone from his heart. The French government
feared, however, that Prince Leopold might imitate his
brother Prince Charles in 1866 in the Roumanian affair, re^
pudiate his father, and go to Spain. The Duc de Gramont
and Ollivier knew the character of the Prussian government
and of Bismarck, and were determined to stroke the t's and
dot the i's of the renunciation; they aimed at inflicting a
personal as well as a political humiliation on the Hohen-
zollern sovereign and his minister. Like a weak man
Gramont did not know where to stop. His insistence
that King William must give a guarantee that the candi-
dature would not be renewed, was made on his own re-
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 269
sponsibility without communication to the Prime Minister,
or the Council of State, or, apparently, Napoleon himself.
King William, who had behaved correctly so far, and was
convinced that his acquiescence in the renunciation closed
the whole episode, naturally resented the French demand
as an insinuation against his royal good faith and as a deli-
berate attempt to pick a quarrel with Prussia. The
message through an aide-de-camp that the incident was
closed, and that he had nothing further to say, was some-
what curt but unobjectionable. It was not insulting nor
intended to be an insult. Gramont had by his folly
pledged France; much worse, he had given Bismarck his
chance.
